WHERE:
Clare Cottage, Croydon to Caherdaniel, Co. Kerry, Republic of Ireland. Well, alright
not quite all the way from Croydon, the first place on the route for us was
Birdlip Hill which is near my sisters place in Gloucester. We followed the route that Grandad and his
brother took in 1909 fairly faithfully. Unfortunately none of us managed to do the
whole journey, however we did have one motorcycle that braved the whole trip

WHY: It's partly the fault of the famous photo, all of
the family have seen it some time or other. Grandad and his brother setting
off on their motorcycles for a summer holiday in Ireland in 1909. Nothing special you might think, but back then it was quite a big deal. They rode nearly a thousand
miles on motorcycles with barely more power than a modern moped,

on roads that were in places so
bad that they had to ride on the pavement, chased by ferocious
Irish dogs and menaced by horses and cows that had never seen a motorcycle. In fact it was such a big deal that Grandad wrote it all up for
Motorcycling Magazine
. The other person who is to blame is Rob, he suggested that we do the centenary
trip to Ireland in 1997 and it seemed like we would
always have plenty of time to get ready, but now the time has come and gone and
if you didn't join us it's now too late. However we did take lots of photo's
which you can view here

HOW:In the end we did manage to amass a few
strange forms of transport. A 1934 Bentley, A 1976 Fire Trucks, Briefly a 1928
Vauxhall Princeton tourer, a Suzuki motorcycle, a Subaru, a Transit van and an
Audi A4.